Poor maternal and newborn health is a significant contributor to the burden of disease in developing countries, with most maternal and newborn deaths caused by the poor health of the mother before or during pregnancy, or by poor quality care during and immediately after childbirth. In close collaboration with Aga Khan University, Family Care International undertook work highlighting the interconnections between maternal and newborn health and identifying common advocacy messages to promote investment in and implementation of evidence-based interventions found to be beneficial to both women and newborns.

Built on findings emerging from a systematic review of recent and on-going research of the impact of potential interventions on maternal and newborn outcomes,this set of advocacy materials for dissemination at key meeting and events includes:

An executive summary of the full research paper, for research/academic/medical audiences

A pocket card, for advocates and policymakers, incorporating the review findings and key messages

Released as a CD-ROM containing a set of user-friendly tools, including 70 PowerPoint slides, a user’s manual, and additional resources, designed for use in developing and giving presentations on a range of sexual and reproductive health and rights topics. Content from the CD-ROM is enabled online.

This checklist presents a set of tips and relevant resources and tools to help private sector health providers improve their knowledge, skills, and capacity to conduct advocacy in support of maternal health.

Rangwe Health Centre in Kenya is one facility that has shown a remarkable change since the beginning of the Skilled Care Initiative. The facility is featured in our short film, “Changing Lives, Saving Lives.”

A set of seven briefs, available in English, French, and Spanish, that outline challenges and solutions for increasing the availability and use of three essential maternal health medicines (oxytocin, misoprostol and magnesium sulfate), drawing on lessons and experience from reproductive health supplies.

The Focus on 5 briefing cards, produced by Women Deliver in consultation with Family Care International, outline why decision-makers should prioritize saving mothers’ and newborns’ lives and the key investments they should make in order to achieve that goal. Designed for use by policymakers, civil society groups, and advocates, Focus on 5 details why the world needs to invest now in maternal, newborn, and reproductive health and the strategic actions needed to improve vital health services for mothers and their newborns in the developing world.

Flip chart addresses changes during puberty, STIs including HIV/AIDS, early pregnancy, and unsafe abortion, as well as negotiating condom use, building healthy relationships, and communicating with parents.

This Spanish-language guide is a tool to assess the unmet sexual and reproductive health needs of indigenous and rural young people; community groups involve youth directly in identifying their priorities and key issues. Results and recommendations from the application of the guide in rural communities of Panama and Bolivia are also available.

This CD-ROM, created by Family Care International and Ipas, is a comprehensive advocacy and information tool that includes everything needed to learn about unsafe abortion and make presentations on this topic.

This infographic highlights the critical role that midwives play in improving maternal and newborn health around the world. Midwives have a powerful voice in changing policies and practices that support the availability, accessibility, acceptability, and quality of health services.

The WHO guidelines on Preventing early pregnancy and poor reproductive outcomes among adolescents in developing countries have been translated into Spanish by FCI with funding from UNFPA and WHO. These guidelines focus on two sets of key actions that aim to reduce the number of adolescent pregnancies in developing countries. The first set of actions seeks to prevent early pregnancy by preventing marriage before 18 years of age, increasing knowledge and understanding the importance of pregnancy prevention, increasing the use of contraception and preventing coerced sex. The second set of actions seeks to prevent poor reproductive outcomes by reducing unsafe abortions and by increasing the use of skilled antenatal, childbirth and postnatal care.

This advocacy publication, produced in 2007 by FCI and UNFPA for the Campaign to End Fistula, presents promising practices and strategic recommendations for policy makers, programmers, and researchers seeking strengthen fistula prevention and treatment programmes in affected countries.

A toolkit with additional advocacy tools (communications/strategic messaging guide, detailed descriptions of promising practices, multimedia resources, and Powerpoint presentation) was published in CD-ROM format in 2010 — most of those tools are also available for download here.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) provide a framework for governments to reduce global poverty. This set of 8 reference cards provides clear, concise information on the links between sexual and reproductive health and the MDGs.

Developed by Family Care International and Gynuity Health Projects, the Misoprostol for Postpartum Hemorrhage Information Kit contains a range of informational publications and briefing cards onthe potential role of a widely available drug (misoprostol) in reducing deaths from postpartum hemorrhage, the leading cause of maternal death and disability in developing countries. All publications are available in English, French, and Spanish.

Misoprostol for Postpartum Hemorrhage: Questions and Answers for Policy Makers provides information about misoprostol’s critical role in preventing and treating postpartum bleeding or hemorrhage (PPH), one of the leading causes of maternal death worldwide. Misoprostol, a medicine initially developed to prevent stomach ulcers, is often the best available option for preventing and treating PPH in many low-resource countries, and may be a woman’s only chance for surviving PPH.

FCI has released an Advocacy Toolkit for Programme Managers that carefully lays out the steps in designing and launching an advocacy strategy to ensure that existing government commitments are translated into concrete programs and services. The Advocacy Training Guide, a companion piece to the Toolkit, was developed to strengthen the skills of grassroots community-level groups, networks, and organizations to design and plan an advocacy campaign.

This manual is the product of collaboration between the Maternal and Neonatal Health (MNH) Program at JHPIEGO and FCI. It offers guidance for assessing and monitoring safe motherhood programs by presenting a set of indicators, called a Birth Preparedness and Complication Readiness (BP/CR) Index, and providing a comprehensive set of tools for deriving these indicators and tracking progress.

Nearly 16 million girls between 15 and 19 give birth annually, almost all of them in developing countries. After a systematic review of the evidence, WHO has developed guidelines on Preventing early pregnancy and poor reproductive outcomes among adolescents in developing countries, which focus on key actions that aim to reduce the number of adolescent pregnancies in developing countries. In 2012, in collaboration with WHO and UNFPA, FCI developed this advocacy toolkit, available in English, French, and Spanish, to promote the dissemination of the guidelines’ recommendations to policy makers and program planners globally. Designed for advocates, the toolkit encourages and enables evidence-based action among decision-makers, opinion leaders, medical personnel, researchers, and affected communities to prevent early pregnancy and poor reproductive outcomes among adolescent girls.

10-page pamphlet outlining the problem of maternal health, describing the Safe Motherhood Initiative, and summarizing effective safe motherhood program approaches, based on lessons learned from the Initiative’s first decade.

Highlights the role of safe motherhood within the reproductive health framework and summarizes global commitments to safe motherhood from conventions and international conferences held in the last decade.

A report of an international conference held in Tunisia, November 2000. The document summarizes the meeting’s proceedings and key outcomes/next steps, and details the commitments made by seven countries to improve the coverage of skilled health professionals at the time of labor and delivery.

These briefing cards, produced by FCI on behalf of the Universal Access Project and a range of partners, detail the linkages between sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and other key development issues including environmental sustainability, gender equality, economic growth, educational attainment, and broader health goals. They present key facts about the impact of SRHR on the broader development agenda and make recommendations for inclusion of SRHR in the post-2015 development framework.

Set of 9 easy to use reference cards covering key issues in sexual and reproductive health and rights. Each includes a definition, a quote from the ICPD Programme of Action or Fourth World Conference on Women, basic facts, and “areas for action.”

This collection of case studies was developed by JHPIEGO/Maternal and Neonatal Health Program, Saving Newborn Lives/Save the Children, and Family Care International to demonstrate different approaches to influencing national policies on maternal and newborn health.

The Lancet, a premiere health journal, produced two special editions in 2006 on the important topics of Maternal Survival and Sexual and Reproductive Health. FCI also produced an Executive Summary for the Maternal Survival Series.

Helps young people make informed decisions about their sexual lives by providing comprehensive information for adolescents on changes during puberty, sexuality and sexual health, pregnancy and contraception, STIs including HIV/ AIDS, sexual coercion and violence, substance abuse, building healthy relationships, communicating with parents, and planning for the future. The manual has been developed in fivelanguages and six different versions reflecting the regional contexts and the unique challenges facing adolescents in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean.